


i will not kiss you

by orphan_account



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, OT3: yengeraskier, honestly my partner prompted me this shit and now i'm gonna make them fucking suffer, slight mention of suicide and self harm, some seriously heavy angst anyways duh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27482662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Jaskier was a human. They had always been aware of it, it should not have been a shock.[ot3: yengeraskier]
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	i will not kiss you

[ _I will not kiss you_  
_'cause the hardest part of this is losing you_ ]

The first day wasn't the worst one. It was just, quite simply, as it often happened, the busiest. Geralt's immediate reaction was falling into silence for hours, which wasn't much different from his usual attitude anyway. He was the one who decided the burial site. Yennefer tried and tried, and tried again where there was nothing left to try. She stood with Jaskier all day, failing to revive him. At the end of it, she was physically hurt by the effort, her eyes empty, and still possessed enough chaos to walk out, breathe in and let her fury make trees collapse and twist and break down to rot.

It was on the second day, at dawn, that they buried him on the banks of a river just near the old, wooden, half-abandoned house he'd spent his last days in. Geralt didn't say a word about his choice. Yennefer knew all the same. _He loved singing near the water._ It was a lonely ceremony, if it could be called a ceremony at all. Jaskier had many friends around the Continent, but none that had stood by him his whole life, none beside them. Cirilla came too, and didn't cry. She was a grown woman, with the blood of her grandmother flowing through her veins, and the gods knew Calanthe had endured destiny's blows with no tears.

Geralt broke on the third day. They were lying in bed, in silence. He spoke as calmly as he could, and his voice was dark and lost. He spoke for such a long time, the sky slowly became clearer. Every tale felt heavier, every memory bitter. Yennefer, in all her mighty power, looked at the man she loved in pain and felt as powerless as that little hunchback girl who got bullied lifetimes ago. And to think, Jaskier was human after all. They'd known it from the start. It should not have been a shock. Not for a witcher, nor for a sorceress. It should not, and it was. Despite what they said about witchers and sorcerers, grief hit them all equally. And they'd loved their stupid, insufferable, always talkative, trouble-searching bard. They'd loved him for so many years, easily forgetting that while they never aged, he did.

There were days Geralt would retreat into himself for hours. Not working, nor even observing anything around him. His enhanced senses worked, it was his head that didn't quite follow. _I never kissed him goodbye, he'd think, on a loop. And that's what a witcher gets for being senseless enough to fall in love with a human._

Yennefer hadn't loved him at first. If anything, she'd detested his constant singing. She'd grown to like him one day, when she found him composing a song for Geralt - not for the world, just _for Geralt_. She sensed right there and then that their common love for this man would link them forever, whether she liked it or not. Funny enough, she'd eventually loved him too. Triss had said she'd never expected her to fall for a human. She'd never expected it herself.

Jaskier had fallen ill quite young, in perspective. Some lucky ones lived even eighty, ninety years. He'd said goodbye much earlier. His last request was to have his lute. They often heard him strumming it in the middle of the night, between coughs and cries. He said, _don't kiss me, Geralt, I'm old and ugly now and not so kissable now and that wouldn't make a great ballad_. He'd say the very same to Yennefer. They obeyed, for they didn't want to have him feel like they pitied him.

Geralt had lost track of time when he found Yennefer crying softly, trembling a little in front of a mirror. He took her hand - turned into a fist - steadily. _You know better than me, Yen. Punching a mirror won't bring him back._ She knew, indeed. Some scars had never healed the pain of those four marks. Some more wouldn't bring Jaskier back - smiling, pointing at them with his dumb laughter and saying, _you have to listen to this one, it's gonna be on history books_.

_Lifetimes would go by without him as lifetimes had gone by before he was born. It was how their existence worked. They met him in dreams, at times. They told him they wished they'd kissed him. They watched him blush. Yennefer laughed at his embarassment. Geralt just shook his head with a contemplative hm. Then it rained, it always rained, and a happy ballad played, a song that didn't tell the truth but then again, respect doesn't make history._


End file.
